'Exit 8' Review: Breaks the Video Game Curse [TIFF 25]
Skillfully adapted from the minimalist psychological horror video game The Exit 8, Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8 is an eerily worthy adaptation that truly breaks free of the bad luck surrounding the genre.
To say that most live-action adaptations of video games suck (bar Jonathan Nolan’s Fallout series on Amazon Prime) isn't exactly a stretch of the imagination. Nine times out of ten, a video game adaptation isn’t the vision of a dedicated artist but the product of a boardroom of executives trying to milk a cash cow for its last penny and dime. Genki Kawamura’s film adaptation of The Exit 8 (simply titled Exit 8), however, is that much-needed outlier. A straightforward adaptation of a barebones concept, Exit 8 will surely satisfy fans of the game while offering further background to the game’s signature minimalism. It’s not necessarily reinventing the wheel, but does it really need to? As somebody who’s played and escaped the game’s endlessly serpentine passageways, Exit 8 is a worthy video game adaptation that manages to make its originator even better.
The Exit 8’s setup couldn't be simpler. Stuck in a Groundhog Day-type time loop in a subway station, you're scanning the same hallway over and over until you find an “anomaly.” If you find an anomaly, turn back immediately. If there are no anomalies, you're good to keep walking. The Exit 8 thrives in its liminal spaces and is so indebted to Stanley Kubrick’s steadicam visual style that a whole The Shining reference was omitted from the film adaptation. The game plays like you're Kubrick’s cameraguy, and Kawamura carries over that visual language quite well to the silver screen. The uncanny eeriness of the repetitive hallways becomes dizzying at a certain point, which is as unnerving as it is frustrating, making for a stellar psychological thrill ride.
Rigidly structured into three acts following three different perspectives, Exit 8 is all about being caught in feedback loops of indecision. Exit 8 primarily follows “The Lost Man,” (Kazunari Ninomiya) a heavily indecisive guy who’s nearly lobotomized by his daily routine and dead-end job, the perfect victim for the gauntlet of Exit 8’s gauntlet of liminal spaces, unnerving hallways, and real-time decision-making. Forced to make the “stay or go” choice at every turn, Exit 8 is about taking control of your own life and choosing to move forward. None of this thematic meat is anywhere to be found in the game, which makes its adaptation all the more worthwhile. There are a few scares from the game that I wish weren’t omitted from the film adaptation, but Exit 8 adds far more than it subtracts.
Usually, changes in video game films end up soiling the finished product, but this might be the first video game film where the changes don’t inhibit anything. For what’s translated from small screen to big screen, the changes aren’t quite severe, with the differences actually being quite welcome for a change. We’re given a backstory to the game’s only other character, a strange bald man (Yamato Kochi) who is also trapped in the hallways with us, and it proves to be a strong point towards the film’s themes of indecision and poor judgment. The bald man was merely a red herring or an anomaly in the game, but Kawamura transforms him into a tragic character and a reminder of what happens when we trap ourselves in vicious cycles of poor self-governance. The bar might be on the floor regarding video game films with actual thematic weight, but I’ll take eight of these over another A Minecraft Movie on any day of the week.
Above all else, Exit 8 succeeds in recreating the palpably uncomfortable atmosphere that made the game such a hit in 2023. The hype didn’t come from nowhere, with millions of views across dozens of YouTube “Let’s Play” channels, and Genki Kawamura managed to commandeer the hype train at the exact right time. The Exit 8 wasn’t too far out of the gaming zeitgeist for heads not to turn heads in anticipation for the feature film, but Exit 8 comes at the exact right time for new players to dive in and play the game with a fresh perspective. Unlike other video games, The Exit 8 doesn’t have any “lore” to build off of, so Kawamura had free rein to run wild within an existing sandbox. It’s rare for a video game movie to exist as a genuine companion piece to its source material, but the careful replication of the gameplay leaves little to be desired.
Most video game movies get lost in the shuffle of either arriving too late (Five Nights at Freddy’s) or being completely unlike their source material (Borderlands), but Exit 8 fortunately avoids these easy pitfalls. I can’t stress enough how refreshing it is to see a video game film actually enhance the game’s playing experience, as the film provides the game with a fun backstory that previously didn't exist. The game never had a story or any background as to why you’re stuck in the tunnels; you’re just told to escape. The Exit 8 can exist without its film adaptation, but the film makes the game even better. I suppose there’s nowhere but up when you’re working with a game as simple as The Exit 8, but I’ve seen far too many movies screw up simple premises.
I can’t say that I’m a superfan of The Exit 8 (it took me less than a day to beat, and I haven’t picked it up since), but Exit 8 is sure to bring an influx of sales to an already popular video game. I’m glad that the “bad video game movie” curse has finally broken after so many years, and I hope other filmmakers follow Genki Kawamura’s example in being faithful to the source material, if not adding to it like Kawamura does. It’s nowhere near the saving grace that’ll stop video game films from mostly being IP-driven cashgrabs, but it’s a start at the very least.